Virtual Quilting Workshops and Lectures

It has been a busy couple of weeks with both Quilt Canada and the Vermont Quilt Festival presenting their annual events online. They are two of my favourite shows to attend. While Quilt Canada happens in a different location in Canada each year, the Vermont Quilt Festival is held now in Essex Junction near Burlington, Vt. Quilt Canada just had their 40th anniversary and for VQF it was their 45th! I have been to about a few QC’s and once to VQF. I hope to go to both again in person when QC comes back to Halifax in 2023 for the 4th time and to next years VQF.

While both events were very well organized I did miss the usual chatter and excitement that you just can’t find online at a virtual event. I did enjoy the excellent quilt shows and being able to see the quilts over and over again. There are some talented people out there! I was very disappointed that Nova Scotia quilters were not represented at all at QC! Why not? We have amazing quilters here, did they just not enter? We need to work harder at promoting the National Juried Show and encouraging our quilters to enter. My philosophy is that if I am happy with the quilt, enter it, if it gets in that is a bonus, if not it that’s ok! I was delighted that several Canadian quilters had work accepted in the VQF. Special shout out to Mary Elizabeth Kinch who won several ribbons!

I am really going to be better organized for next year and chose a quilt or two to enter our NJS and maybe even the VQF.

Quilt Canada’s event was primarily lectures and demos, no workshops. VQF has had workshops, lectures and demos by their vendors. I have taken two workshops and one lecture. I decided to take a chance and try something new for me. I have been quilting almost 48 years and there is still so much to learn, techniques to try and new quilters to meet. I took a workshop on Improv Piecing from Cindy Grisdela and later today I am taking a workshop with Sujata Shah on Kawandi Siddi quilts. I will post pictures of the results soon, both are small projects. the improv class was all by machine and the Kawandi is all by hand. you can see images of Kawandi quilts here Wish me luck!

in between everything else I did get some sewing done on other projects. I enjoyed the New England Motel Quilt Along hosted by Brimfield Awakening so much I started another one called the “Amish Motel” for now! I now have all the blocks and 3 rows sewn together, the completed top will come soon!

“Street Party” top done! Pattern is by Teresa Jantzi. I will repost these once they are quilted.

Yes, Spring Did Finally Arrive

We are finally enjoying spring like weather, the leaves are out, the daffodils are up and my fingers are crossed we will have some tulips this year. I hope they bloom before the town deer find them. I think last year I had one. Stay tuned!

I have had a busy few weeks. I participated in the 52 Quilters project. This project was begun January 1, 2015 by a British quilter, Chris Webb. Each week a new quilter takes over the blog, the Instagram account and the Twitter account from somewhere in the world. Chris is looking for more quilters to take over in the coming weeks, so if you are interested contact him through the link above. It was fun to participate and share some of my quilts and quilting in Nova Scotia.

Making Do, machine pieced and machine quilted (by Lynn Jones)

My quilt Making Do has flown all the way to Lethbridge, Alberta! It will be in the Canadian Quilters Association's annual National Juried Show. It has been a few years since I entered and I was thrilled to be accepted. There were very few east coast quilts on the list, I am glad I entered!

My nephew (who was married early last August) and his wife are expecting a baby in July so I just had to make them a baby quilt. I love using the "Falling Charms" (a Missouri Star Quilt Company tutorial) pattern for baby quilts so I made two as my niece and her husband who were also married last August are expecting a baby in October! They don't live in Nova Scotia but they do come home as often as they can, I know how much they love it here so the fabric I chose was "Beach House" by Kate Nelligan. I love the images of lobster, nets, waves, mussels and fish - all very Nova Scotian!

My Brunch Bunch got together this week, it has been ages since I have been able to join them all. We have been getting together for 32 years now having gotten to know each other through volunteering with our provincial craft council, NSDCC and working on their exhibition "Profile '81" which traveled nationally. We enjoyed those meetings so much we kept on going! I had forgotten that Shirl was the recipient of one of my Christmas gifts one year.

Circle of Friends was hand appliqued, machine pieced and machine quilted. I love the effect of the wavy fabric on the lower right and border. I must look and see if I have any more of that!.

I have new projects coming up, a 2 day workshop with Becky Goldsmith (Piece O'Cake Designs), she is coming to Nova Scotia to be my Guild's "Extraordinary Quilter". She will present a lecture at our 15th Annual Dessert Party and then give 2 workshops. I have old projects I really must re-visit and accomplish something. I am really looking forward to Becky's lecture and workshop.

We continue with the house renovations though every nice day (when he isn't golfing) Peter can be found up a ladder re-shingling and painting the exterior of the house. The pinky beige is going replaced by a lovely blue. Upon removal of an old shingle he found a previous paint colour that is very close to what we chose. After the winter we had, we are hoping for a good spring and summer for painting!

The front hall is done too, the old plaster had to come down and be replaced by gyproc, the floors have been sanded and refinished, the carpet is gone from the stairs and they have been painted but we don't know yet who Barry was!

The mysteries of this old house continue!

Catching Up Again

Life seems to be a lot of catching up these days! Hard to believe that I have been home from Quilt Canada for almost 2 weeks. It has been a whirlwind of a couple of weeks too!

Quilt Canada was great! Thanks to the Local Organizing Committee headed up by Karen Henry and the workshop organizers Deanne Hemphill and Fiona Oxford.

Deanne managing her phone and her camera, a quilter of many talents!

My classes were great and I seemed to have students from across Canada, Newfoundland to the Northwest Territories and everywhere in between as well as Wales and the US!

High level of concentration in my Stab Stitch quilting workshop.

Learning to hand piece the Waternish Star, oh those tiny pieces!

Hand appliqueing Running Around in Circles.

It was great to see some familiar faces from past Quilt Canada's too. I was especially glad to spend some time with Kay Phillips and Nina Stahlsmicht.

Nina specializes in all things feed sack!

It was interesting being back at Dalhousie University, my alma mater. There were times when floods of memories came back and I just had to stop and remember and enjoy those great times. 

My only regret was there wasn't time to get together with the other teachers, I think I managed to speak to about half of them! I felt badly too as one of the NS teachers that we couldn't properly welcome our visiting teacher who came from across Canada, the US and the UK. Maybe next time!

After QC, Heather Stewart stayed on for a 5 day visit with us. Heather (from ON) is a member of the MBQG and comes to NS whenever she can. We had a great time visiting Avonport Discount Fabrics, our favourite lunch spot the Port Pub, our guild closing pot luck dinner and AGM and a lunch with our bee, the Cove Quilters. 

Thanks to my friend Cheryl Hughes in England we were able to decorate the table for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, had I thought of it earlier we could have had a lovely tiara as a centre piece!

Linda, Sandra, Sandy, Jane and Heather.

Thanks to everyone for their contributions, we had a delicious lunch!

Heather reveals her challenge, house paint with handpainted fabrics. Note her fascinator she is wearing, made by Linda Mills!

We had another reveal day for our bee 12x12 challenge. This was a challenge for many this time and everyone came through with flying colours! The theme was house paint. Everyone received 2 paint chips which were randomly chosen and had to use those to be inspired using the theme house paint, paint the town or painted ladies.

Top row, left to right - Heather, Linda H, Sandra; middle row - Linda M and Vicki; bottom row - Sandy, Barb and Donna.

We are entering our all our challenges in our MBQG Quilt Show September 27-30, 2013. The challenge will be just how to hang/show them? The next challenge is to be inspired by a favourite book, That is a tough one as there are so many! Those will be revealed in September in time for the Quilt Show at the end of the month.